After breakfast today, Julia asked me, “Do you know how long it takes light from the sun to reach the earth?” I said no, slightly ashamed that I didn’t. “Well, guess!” she told me.
“Uhh, one minute.”
“No, more. It’s a surprisingly long time.”
“An hour!”
“Way less.”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Close!”
“Uhhh, seven and a half minutes.”
“Almost – it’s eight minutes.”
“Wow. That’s a lot longer than I thought!”
“Yeah, me too! But that’s what it is. That means that if the sun burned out, we would have eight minutes to migrate to a new planet. I think it would be fun to leave earth and move to a new planet.”
“Uhhhhh…” I said, thinking that sounded a lot like some craziness that Newt Gingrich would spout.